1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a network management system, and in particular to system and method which manage the network based on the capabilities and operation states of network components.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been disclosed an example of a conventional network management system in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 8-328984. According to the conventional system, the network information regarding the capabilities and operation states of network components is collected from the existing network using a management protocol such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). The collected network information is stored onto a network database. In the case where the network is modified on demand, a simulation of the modified network is performed using the network database prior to actually making a modification to the existing network. In this manner, it can be determined in advance whether the simulation of the modified network provides the expected performance. If the modified network is good in the simulation, the modification is made to the existing network.
However, if the simulation of the modified network does not provide acceptable performance, it is necessary for a network manger to redesign the modification of the network and then to perform the simulation of the redesigned network again. This is a time-consuming and inefficient procedure.
An object of the present invention is to provide network management system and method which can automatically perform the redesign of a network in response to user""s demands,
Another object of the present invention is to provide management system and method which can automatically produce an optimal plan for updating the settings of network components.
According to the present invention, network information of the network is stored for retrieval and, when inputting a plurality of demands each for a change of performance of the network, a modified design of the network is provided based on the network information to satisfy the demands.
An initially-modified design of the network may be produced by determining a minimum-cost route for each of the demands, end then the initially-modified design may be optimized to produce the modified design by changing the minimum-cost route for each of the demands so that cost of modification of the network is minimized as a whole.
Since the modified design of the network is provided based on the network information to satisfy the demands, optimal performance and configuration management to satisfy the demands can be automatically obtained.